Exclusionary Rule Good Faith Exceptions (Criminal Law Series)

This casebook supersedes the 2011 edition of the same title. It contains a selection of 214 Federal Court of Appeals decisions that interpret and apply the good faith exception to the exclusionary rule in Fourth Amendment search and seizure cases. The selection of decisions spans from 2002 to the date of publication. For each circuit, the cases are listed in the order of frequency of citation. The most cited decisions appear first.

In United States v. Leon, 468 U.S. 897, (1984), the Supreme Court stated that the exclusionary rule is a judicially created remedy, designed to deter police misconduct. Therefore, where a police officer acting with objective good faith has obtained a search warrant from a judge or magistrate and acted within its scope, the marginal or nonexistent benefits produced by suppressing evidence obtained in objectively reasonable reliance on a subsequently invalidated search warrant cannot justify the substantial costs of exclusion. We have held that [t]he good faith exception applies unless one of the four exceptions to it is present. [Citations Omitted] US v. Gray, 669 F. 3d 556 (5th Cir. 2012)

Those exceptions are:

(1) If the issuing magistrate/judge was misled by information in an affidavit that the affiant knew was false or would have known except for reckless disregard of the truth; (2) where the issuing magistrate/judge wholly abandoned his or her judicial role; (3) where the warrant is based on an affidavit so lacking in indicia of probable cause as to render official belief in its existence entirely unreasonable; and (4) where the warrant is so facially deficient in failing to particularize the place to be searched or the things to be seized that the executing officers cannot reasonably presume it to be valid. [Citations Omitted]
Ibid.

The good-faith exception to the exclusionary rule applies to a police officer's reliance on binding circuit precedent. US v. Lebowitz, 676 F. 3d 1000 (11th Cir. 2012)